is it stressing (what you've morally accepted)
by altschmerz
Summary: The Director before Thornton was not careful with his agents. Jack discovers this when he comes in to work one morning to find Mac already gone, sent on a loan to another team, one Jack has never met. Mac is not in good condition when returned, and it raises concerns for Jack about their roles - and future - with DXS. (pre-series, gen, for my h/c bingo square 'fever/delirium')


_back at it again with the hurt mac fic, y'all must be getting tired of me! this was for my h/c bingo prompt 'fever/delirium'. it's set pre-series, with the director before patti. was there a director before patti? well, there is now._

 _thanks a million and a half to v, my best friend and the best editor, who made this, y'know, readable. (a million and a half probably isn't enough tbh.)_

 _title is from matt maeson's 'me and my friends are lonely._

* * *

There are few things in life that unnerve Jack more than getting to the office before his workaholic young partner. He spends a couple of minutes poking around looking for Mac before Lange calls him into a conference room to break the last piece of news he'd been expecting to hear that morning.

It was supposed to be an easy mission, is the thing. And the moment the Director said it was the moment Jack knew for a hundred and ten percent certain that it was not going to be, in any way, an ' _easy_ ' mission. Putting aside the fact that missions are never _easy_ , only ranked on a scale from 'we did our job and nobody went to the hospital' to 'Cairo', Jack _knows better_ than to tempt fate by saying things like 'easy' and 'mission' in the same sentence. Their boss and the current head of DXS, Director Patrick Lange, however, did not appear to be in possession of that same brand of good old Texan common sense. And then putting even that aside, lies the worst part of this mission: it's not, in fact, Jack's mission.

And Mac's in trouble, or he's going to be, soon. Jack just knows it."It doesn't matter that it's supposed to be an easy mission," Jack says as soon as the reality of the situation sinks in. "Missions are never _easy_ , you know that, and it's just going to be harder if Mac is out there without me to back him up."

Lange shakes his head.

"Look," Jack sighs. "Patrick. Pat. Can I call you Patty?"

"My name is Director Lange," he responds flatly.

Jack has never much liked the man, but neither has he actively disliked him before. There has always been an understanding, a business relationship that's been largely hands-off, a distribution of assignments and procurement of backup that has existed on a foundation of conditional mutual trust. Now, squinting at him and noting that the man looks bored, Jack's opinion takes a sharp turn into active dislike.

"I don't have to ask your permission to send my agent on an assignment, Agent Dalton." Lange doesn't sound angry, or condescending, just… Well, just bored. "Agent MacGyver is on loan to Quentin Kells and Serena Thomas's team and that's the end of it. It'll last a week, maybe more if there are complications. While he is there, you will be leading tactical drills in San Jose. The new recruits need somebody who knows their stuff, someone with real life experience, to evaluate them, beginning tomorrow. There's no point in trying to argue with me on this, MacGyver is already on a plane."

 _"Already on a_ \- Lange-"

"What part of those instructions were unclear to you, Agent Dalton?" Lange's bored tone is edging into irritated now, and Jack blows a harsh breath out through his nose.

"I don't feel right about this," he insists. It's become clear he's not going to get anywhere with Lange, especially given Mac has evidently already been shipped off without Jack even having the chance to impress upon him exactly how important it is that he come home in one piece. Even so, he's going to make it perfectly clear to Lange exactly where he stands on this whole bullshit scenario. "You know how he is, how he'll push himself. Hell, if you won't send me, send somebody else, somebody from one of the other teams, someone who's worked with him before, knows how he does things. There's a reason we don't change up teams every five minutes. I… I just have a bad, _bad_ feeling about this."

"Your concern has been noted," Lange says. Bored-irritated has been replaced with 'icily polite'. It's a frequent way for the Director to speak when something isn't going to plan, when someone is pushing back against orders. It's something that put Jack off before but downright pisses him off now. "And now that you've been briefed on Agent MacGyver's whereabouts, and had a chance to voice your reservations, which I will take under advisement, I expect you're going to follow your orders."

For an off-center, unbalanced moment, Jack doesn't respond either to affirm or deny, he just stands in the middle of the room and processes. He wavers between continuing to argue, a pointless battle that will only leave him exhausted and resentful, and leaving the room as quickly as possible, the sooner he's able to be frustrated and anxious without having to see Lange's two-way mirror face the better. Placid, smooth, reflecting you back to you, no way of telling what's actually on the other side. Jack has never trusted faces like that. There's no way of knowing if something's dangerous when you can't see what's inside it.

Jack grits his teeth and nods. "Yes, sir." The words are clipped and frosty. "If that's it, I'm going to get going. San Jose's not close." Without waiting for confirmation that that is indeed it, Jack walks away, restraining himself greatly to avoid yanking the door open, instead pulling it with a reasonable amount of force required by the situation.

"Agent Dalton." Lange's voice stops him as he's halfway out the door.

For a moment, Jack entertains the idea of not stopping, of continuing on out of the room as if he hadn't heard the Director's voice at all. Figuring that would cause more problems than it would solve, however, he stops, turning halfway and looking at Lange over his shoulder.

"What?"

"I'm confident in MacGyver's abilities. He's going to be fine." It's the first hint of sympathy Jack's gotten from the man at all, a reminder that there is a soul in there somewhere, however faint and clouded it might seem at times. "I'll be sure to keep you updated with any information on his progress as soon as I have it."

Whatever concession it may have been, an accomodation to the anxiety bubbling like heartburn in Jack's sternum, he's not about to thank Lange for it, when this is not a call that ever should've been made to begin with. Instead he gives another curt nod and leaves.

San Jose is not extremely far from Los Angeles, not far enough to warrant a plane ticket, but it's a substantial drive. Honestly, Jack is glad for the time alone. He doesn't really feel excited about interacting with other people right now. The conversation with Lange has left a bitter taste in the back of his throat, and though he knows Mac is an adult, well trained and highly intelligent, perfectly capable of handling a mission on his own or with a strange team, but it's not the mission Jack is worried about. The mission will be fine, Mac will get it done.

What the cost to Mac is going to be, now _that_ scares the hell out of him.

Yes, Mac is an adult, well trained and highly intelligent, and he can take care of himself, but the plain fact of the matter is, can or not, he isn't _going_ to. That's what Jack is there for. He knows he's a professional, knows he's good at what he does. Better than good, he's great. Jack has never been one to shortchange his own talent. But Mac is better than great, isn't like anything or anyone Jack's ever seen or worked with before, and he holds no illusions about the status quo here, their roles with DXS.

Jack keeps Mac alive, Mac keeps everybody else alive. It works, but only so long as Jack is actually there to do his part. Like he'd told Lange, Mac is going to push himself, and without somebody to tell him when it's time to stop, to watch his back while he puts it between the danger and the rest of the world, he could push himself right off the edge of something nasty. Call it overprotective, call it paranoid, Jack calls it math.

The more times he prevents Mac from falling, the fewer times he has to pick Mac up off the floor. It's a 1:1 equation.

So here he stands, leaning back against the car at the mostly-deserted rest stop he'd pulled off at not fifteen minutes after leaving, one arm folded over his torso, the other holding his cell up to his ear. This phone call is not one he wanted to make where DXS was still in sight. Jack listens to the phone ring, and the longer it rings without an answer, the tighter the hand pressed to the side of his own rib cage knots itself. Two cycles of the most obnoxious sound Jack has ever been subjected to and Mac hasn't answered, three cycles and Mac hasn't answered, and there it is, the voicemail message.

"Hey, kid, it's Jack. Look, I know you don't need luck or advice or whatever, mission wise, so I'm just calling to remind you there's gonna be dire consequences if you don't come home safe, okay? Dire consequences. I would've stopped you before you left, given you this lecture face to face where I could see the way I'm sure you're rollin' your eyes at me right now, smartass, but Lange had you shipped off before I was even out of my apartment." Jack's attempt to restrain the bitterness in his voice is, in his own judgement, semi-successful. Not that it matters one way or another, given the likelihood that Mac won't even hear this message until the mission is over.

There's a couple seconds of quiet, cars zooming past in the distance, muffled and out of sight over a low hill. Jack tries to think of something helpful or amusing to say, something that will at least give Mac a laugh when he's able to listen to the message, but he's having a hard time being upbeat or helpful or amusing right now.

"Just…" He shakes his head. "You be _careful_. Watch your back, seeing as I'm not there to do it, you hear me? Keep your head down, do your job, and come home safe." Jack clears his throat after a couple more seconds of odd, stilted quiet, and decides he's got to finish this message now before it drags on any longer and he sounds like any more of a freaked out parent sending his kid to summer camp for the first time. "Alright, well. See you soon. Don't do anything stupid. Bye."

As he ends the message, Jack spares a half second to feel his age and muse on how phone calls were much more satisfying to end when he had a flip phone he could snap shut. Tapping a button that isn't even a button, just an image on a touch-screen, just gives the whole message a half-hearted, pointless feel to it.

It's a surprise, when after another ten minutes pacing around this out of the way rest stop, trying to bleed off nervous energy, Jack's phone chimes. A text from Mac.

 _mac_ :  
 _Got your message. I made them give me my phone when they told me who called, because I told them you'd probably call the National Guard or something if I didn't answer, but it's radio silent now until the mission's done. Don't worry. It's gonna be fine._

When in human history telling someone not to worry has actually resulted in a decrease in concern is beyond Jack, but the message makes him smile faintly nonetheless. The smile disappears quickly when he processes what it actually said, 'made them give me my phone'. All in all, it's not entirely unusual for team leaders to collect phones before a particularly sensitive kind of mission, but the wording makes him nervous. He's trying not to catastrophize, to imagine this as some kind of hostage situation, but it's a difficult battle.

It's a gorgeous, mild day outside, and Jack is ignoring it completely. On an ordinary day he might drag this drive out a bit, stop along the way at some observation crest by the ocean, sit at a picnic table with his face turned skyward, glad to be alive. Not this time. This time, his attention is a thousand miles away, though where exactly Mac's loaner assignment was spiriting him off to, Lange hadn't seen fit to tell him. Either that or, in a far less attractive option, Lange himself doesn't know where Kells and Thomas are going, with Jack's partner in tow.

The first option is cagey and, if you ask Jack, completely unnecessary. The second option, though, goes far past that. If Lange didn't even ask where they were taking one of his agents on an outside mission conducted by a team they'd never worked with before, then he's negligent at best, and certainly not the man he'd presented himself to be.

It was always posited as a respect thing, Lange waving a hand, giving a brittle glass smile, and saying some iteration of 'I trust you have it handled'. _Handled_. Yeah, Jack always has it _handled_ but the question now is, does Director Lange?

The steering wheel audibly creaks under Jack's hands when he adjusts his grip. The sun continues to shine merrily down, and he glances up every so often, glaring. Even without his current circumstances, this entire trip would be beyond annoying. San Jose has never been his favorite city on its own, too busy and fast, rushing like a stream reaching freefall. Silicon Valley feels as artificial to Jack as its name implies. And then there's the matter of the reason he's being sent there, to live in a hotel for who knows how long, away from his apartment and the rest of his life.

Living in a hotel, working with an agent he barely knows to evaluate trainees, half of whom have potential while the other half just want to be James Bond, it's not Jack's idea of a good time. Even if he hadn't been worried that somehow, given the kind of luck the kid's been blessed with, Mac would end up half-dead on this mission, or _worse_ , he wouldn't be looking forward to this.

The agent he's working with is fine. She's focused and efficient and an instant team-player, which is good, considering Jack isn't in what he would call his best form, teamwork wise. The recruits aren't bad either, a middling group with a couple of standouts and no one particularly incompetent. It's a tedious and annoying job, though whether Jack would think the same thing if this were just some normal eval job turfed to him by the Director.

It feels like forever and somehow like barely any time has passed at all, but Jack wakes up a week to the day after arriving in San Jose with the Director's words ringing in his ears. He stares at the ceiling of the hotel and hears it circle like his dad's old record player.

 _"It'll last a week."_ Patrick Lange's bored voice grates on Jack's nerves from afar, even just the memory enough to make him clench his teeth. _"Maybe more if there are complications."_

There's been a pit in his stomach since he got to work and Mac wasn't there. It's been growing since he got the text, and that morning, a week since arriving in San Jose, the pit has grown into a chasm. A week has come and gone, which means, if Lange's estimate was based on anything other than wanting Jack out of his hair as soon as possible, either Mac's assignment is wrapping up, or… Or there have been complications. Whichever way you slice it, Jack figures that home base is due a phone call from yours truly.

"Lange," is the answering voice, cutting through the dialling sound before the second ring's begun. The same flat, toneless monotony of Director Lange's voice deepens the frown already on Jack's face and he tries to keep the frustration and concern out of his voice when he speaks.

"It's been a week, Lange," he says. "What's the news on Mac?"

Silence reigns for a few beats.

"News?"

Lange sounds like he has no idea what Jack is talking about, and it pisses Jack off. He breathes in deeply and lets it out in a slow, inaudible whoosh.

"Yes, _news_ , on my _partner_ , who has been loaned out to another agency god knows where doing god knows what for a week. You said you would keep me updated," Jack reminds him tightly. He knows he shouldn't be this

"Ah. I see."

 _I see_ , Jack thinks scathingly, his own internal monologue mocking the words back at the man. _I see_. He waits, hoping there's something useful coming after that.

There isn't.

"I said I would keep you updated when I have information. I have no information. I will call you when I do. In the meantime, continue to do your job and stop attempting to micromanage other agents doing theirs. Understand?"

Before Jack can say anything in response, the call is abruptly ended and the line goes dead. It's perhaps for the best because, at that point, the next words out of Jack's mouth would've gotten him fired, and that certainly wouldn't help Mac at all. Not that there's anything he can do that will help Mac at all, not until he knows what's going on.

A week turns into a week and a half.

Jack hears nothing. No update, not from Lange or from Mac, and Jack's worry for Mac turns into fear, acute and nauseating.

Jack does his job.

A week and a half turns into two.

* * *

It's been raining for four days. It's been raining on and off for longer than that, but four days ago it went 'on' and it hasn't been 'off' since, saturating the ground and throwing a permanent charcoal smear across what was never an attractive sky to begin with. Day bleeds into night, darkening the strange city just enough to edge continuance of the task the team has come here to complete barely closer to 'safe'.

Mac is kneeling on the ground for the second night in a row, elbows deep in complicated machinery that he needs to wire into a very specific other piece of complicated machinery, all without the people monitoring the property he's trespassing on noticing he's there and shooting him dead on sight. His hands are so cold they're almost numb, and he keeps fumbling, dropping stuff and taking three times as long doing things that would've been child's play for him on a good day.

It had been a long week of recon, of trying to pretend like something about Serena Thomas and Quentin Kells doesn't set him on edge, of acting as if this team doesn't feel like hostile territory. They haven't hurt him. He has no reason to be on alert around them but still the alert is there, and it's been exhausting. Everything about this has been exhausting, and continues to be, because after two days of the rain not stopping, Thomas and Kells decided they couldn't wait any longer, and out into the night he'd gone. Probably a good thing, Kells had posited, smiling in a way that looks like a smirk. Less likely to get spotted in the rain.

So here he is, clothing soaked completely through and barely providing the protection from the elements that tissue paper would. Mac clears his throat and wipes a sodden sleeve across his face. It does hardly anything for the water dripping down into his eyes, and he shakes his head from side to side, like a dog who'd come inside from a storm. Everything about this is deeply, deeply uncomfortable, and the only place Mac wants to be right now is at home, watching Bozer play a video game he's already beaten three times, or listening to Jack go on about how if he fixes his bike like that he's gonna have to redo it all in six months anyway. He's not home, though, and as another icy river of water freezes its way down his spine, California has never felt further away.

After the first night, Mac woke up after a few hours of restless sleep with a foreboding tightness in his chest. He coughs a few times, when the others aren't paying attention, light and experimental. Thomas gives him a weird look when he stumbles on the way to the van, but she looks more annoyed than concerned. The van feels too hot, and Mac tugs at the collar of his shirt.

The rain keeps pelting down.

"Come on," Thomas says over the earpiece, fuzzed by static but still clear enough to hear the clipped, rushed tone. "We don't have _forever_. You're supposed to be the best, MacGyver, show us what you've got."

When he wakes up around noon the next day, following another round of insufficient poor-quality sleep, the tightness has gripped harder and his muscles are complaining as if he'd spent the previous day doing a multi-story obstacle course over and over rather than crouched in one place on the ground.

Mac doesn't know if they're aware he'd heard them, in that space of time after he'd woken up but before he'd opened his eyes. Thomas and Kells are talking, and they don't sound happy.

"Recon was supposed to take less than a week. We were supposed to have this thing done in a night. A _night_. We're not even a quarter through." That voice is Kells, flint and gravel. "We were supposed to be back _three days ago._ "

"It's not _my_ fault we were down a guy and had to borrow Lange's wunderkind," snaps back Thomas, sounding as impatient as she's sounded every time Mac's heard her speak. "And it is _definitely_ not my fault the genius Lange was so giddy about turned out to be a dud."

"I've never seen Lange giddy."

"He _almost_ smiled, that's as close as he ever gets. He sold me on this kid hard."

"Whatever," dismisses Kells. "You know he just wanted us to owe him one. Guy collects favors like baseball cards."

Mac drifts back to sleep for another thirty minutes before he's shaken awake by one of the team members lower on the hierarchy. The junior agent has new intel to show him, and the schematics swim in front of Mac's eyes. Focusing is a fight.

It isn't until the sharp report of harshly snapped fingers sounds next to Mac's head, causing him to lurch back, that he realizes Kells has been trying to get his attention. The man's face is twisted in mild annoyance and a survey of the room just beyond him shows the rest of the team milling around awkwardly, one of them shooting him a sympathetic look when Kells sighs. Thomas looks similarly unimpressed with Mac.

"Well, are you?" asks Kells.

Mac blinks. He has no memory of being asked a question. "Am I what?" His own voice sounds muffled, far away and filtered through cotton. His face feels hot and he subtly shakes his head, trying to dispel the feeling. It's just a chill. He needs to pull himself together.

"Jesus, if this is Patrick Lange's best, what kind of idiots do they hire over at DXS?" Turning back from where his comment had been tossed over his shoulder to Thomas, Kells plasters the fakest look of patience Mac has ever seen onto his deceptively pleasant features and repeats, "Are you ready to go again tonight?"

Mac glances outside. The rain sounds like machine gun fire on the windows and his hair sits damp against the back of his neck.

"Yeah," he says. His throat feels raw, his voice dragging out like sandpaper over it. "I'm ready."

"Was that so hard?" Kells mutters under his breath, turning and leaving without another word to Mac directly.

For just a moment, Mac wants to defend himself, point out that he's been working nonstop for over a week with an unfamiliar team whose leaders seem to be operating under the impression he can literally perform miracles. Not to mention the late nights, little to no sleep, the storm that seems to hate him personally, the fog that's overtaken his brain. But Mac is too tired to do anything but collapse back onto the couch that has served as his resting place when such an activity has been permitted.

He goes out again that night.

The rain doesn't stop.

When, disoriented by unfamiliar surroundings and a sudden, inexplicable loss of his usually impeccable balance, Mac trips and goes down hard, catching his face on concrete. There is no concern, no inquiry as to his well-being. Just Quentin Kells' voice hissed over the headset.

"Oh for _fuck's_ sake."

A few seconds pass while Mac lays there on the soaked ground, freezing water pelting his back, the side of his jaw and one of his palms stinging fiercely. Jack's voice springs suddenly to mind. The memory of that worry and warmth, the fondness that ran under everything he said, it's enough to make his throat feel constricted, his eyes smarting with the damage left by the rough ground. Jack isn't here this time, though, and Mac can't wait on familiar hands to pull him off the ground, gently turn his face inspecting it for damage. Mac is on his own for this one, so he shakes off the phantom feeling of a thumb brushing over the scrape on his jaw and drags himself up.

 _Pull yourself together_ , he orders himself fiercely. _It's just a chill. You're fine. You're_ fine.

* * *

The morning that marks two weeks to the day that Jack had walked in to DXS and found Mac not there, he gets a phone call.

"I told you I'd call when I have news," Director Lange's voice tells him dispassionately on the end of the line when Jack answers. "Mission's over, they're stateside again."

Jack closes his eyes and mutters a soundless 'thank you', though who it is aimed at is unclear even to him. Certainly not Lange, that's for sure.

"When does his flight get in?" he asks, trapping the phone between his ear and shoulder and reaching for his laptop, trying to figure out how quickly he can get back to Los Angeles with the current traffic. With any luck he'll be home before Mac is, and can pick him up from the airport. This thought process is interrupted, however, when Lange speaks again.

"He's not on a flight. The team he was on loan to called to let me know he was in a motel in Northern California, some place up by the border with Oregon. They called to tell me we could pick him up at our convenience, but they weren't getting him all the way home. There were some scheduling issues, and they said he was being uncooperative."

 _Uncooperative_?

"Uncooperative," Jack repeats. The urge to immediately tack on 'that's complete bullshit' is strong. "Well, what did he say?"

"What did who say?" The fact that Lange seems to be asking out of a genuine unawareness of what Jack means rather than a desire to mess with him is somehow doing worse things for Jack's opinion of him than if the latter had been the case.

"What did- _Mac_ , Lange, what did _Mac_ say?" The hold Jack is valiantly maintaining on his patience is wearing thin.

"I did not speak directly to Agent MacGyver." There's the boredom again, and Jack is swiftly approaching pissed. "I spoke to the senior agents on the mission. In this context, Kells and Thomas outrank him, and that was all the debrief I needed. We'll send a plane for him when our schedule clears up, but at the moment we unfortunately cannot allocate resources to a nonpriority objective. MacGyver can cool his heels in the motel for a few days. I'll let you know when we send the plane for him and you're more than welcome to ride along."

"Don't bother," Jack snaps. "Send me the address, I can be there in a couple of hours." Before the Director has the opportunity to disagree with this plan, Jack hangs up on him.

To his credit - the absolute smallest, most insignificant amount of credit - Lange sends him the address.

* * *

Jack finds himself driving through a town that can barely claim to still be in California glaring at street signs like they've personally offended him, looking for the street the motel is on and deliberately avoiding ruminating on the motivations or thought processes of the loaner team. If he had gone any further up 1-5 Northbound he would've left the state entirely, ended up in Medford, Oregon, and how these seasoned, senior field agents he's never met had come to the conclusion that this… _this_ was the best place to drop Mac off? It is not something Jack can wrap his mind around.

Worry has dug its teeth sharp into Jack's spine, surging up from where it had seethed in the background for the entire drive. Uncooperative. _Uncooperative_. That's all Lange had given Jack, regarding Mac's condition, that one word, _uncooperative_ , and Jack doesn't think the man could've come up with a vaguer descriptor if he tried. What kind of circumstances would result in Mac being deemed 'uncooperative' and dumped in a motel after the mission was already complete…

The door is in front of him now, adorned with worn metal numbers over faded paint, and Jack supposes he's going to find out. He knocks hard, hoping Mac's tendency towards light sleeping means he'll get an answer regardless of the consciousness of the room's occupant. He clears his throat and calls through the door, hoping that whatever the hell 'uncooperative' meant, it doesn't preclude Mac from recognizing his voice.

"Mac, kid, it's me," he says, voice hovering at that weird in-between place too loud and resonating to be regular speech and just too quiet to not be shouting. "It's Jack. Wanna open the door so we can get this show on the road, get you back home before you turn into a pumpkin?" The joke is not Jack's best. His heart isn't in it, too preoccupied with the slightly accelerated beat it's taken up since he entered the town.

A few long moments pass, wherein Jack hears faint shifting in the room. He tries again.

"Come on, Mac. Are you in there? It's just me, it's just Jack, there's nobody else here."

The door opens slowly, Mac's fingers slipping down off it as his half-hearted push reaches its furthest extension and the wood paneling drifts out the rest of its momentum, coming to a creaking rest. Mac's head lays heavy against the frame of the door and he's not looking right at Jack. The corner is digging into his cheek. It looks uncomfortable, but Mac doesn't seem to care much. What exactly is wrong isn't immediately clear. That there _is_ something wrong, however - _that_ is immediately clear. Mac is not well.

"Hey, buddy," Jack says, deliberately pitching his voice down, speaking soft and gentle like he does with his sister's kids, with witnesses who've seen terrible things and are too afraid to do much more than shake. "Do you wanna let me in?"

"Hey Jack," is what Mac eventually says, like his brain has been processing, a computer operating at half-capacity and lagging on upload. He steps back away from the door, into the dimly lit motel room.

It's a depressing, greyed-out environment, and Jack hates the thought that Mac has been here alone. He has no real idea how long it's been since Thomas and Kells dropped him off, just stuck Mac in this room and _left_ him here, and thinking on it too hard makes the angry tightness in Jack's throat come back, so he focuses on the young man in question instead.

"Here, sit down," he says, taking ahold of Mac's upper arm and guiding him to the room's single queen bed with its threadbare comforter. As he pulls Mac to sit down, not much force at all required to direct his movements, Jack notes that there's a space on the bedspread that's been rumpled, though the almost military-degree tuck of the motel sheets remains undisturbed. It looks like Mac spent some amount of time curled up on this bed in this dingy room, without so much as a blanket to stave off the shivering Jack can feel under his grip.

"You came," Mac mutters as Jack crouches down in front of him. "They said they'd… Someone was gonna send a- You came."

"'You came,' he says." Jack shakes his head. "Of course I came. The world where I don't come for you is a world we don't live in, and _one day_ that is gonna sink in."

"How'd you get here? Director Lange send a plane?"

"I drove," answers Jack absently. He brings his hands up slowly, moving where Mac can see him and predict the contact before it happens. Jack touches the side of his face, turning his head gently. The only visible wound is a small scrape on his jaw, a bruise coloring the skin around it in an aching blue-purple.

With his current symptoms, the sluggish behavior, poor tracking, slow thoughts, Jack's first thought would be a concussion. He moves his hands carefully through Mac's hair, gingerly searching for a lump indicating a blow to the head. Mac leans tiredly into his touch, cheek pressed against Jack's palm when he finds no such injury and returns to just holding him steady. Jack has the nagging suspicion that if he were to abruptly stand up, Mac might crumple without the support. The skin under his hand is hot; it's a dry, unnatural heat that speaks of a fever, and a pretty high one at that.

Giving the rest of him a quick scan with a trained eye, Jack spots no blood, no evidence that Mac has been shot or stabbed. There are no marks on his neck indicating an attempt to strangle him. When he's finished conducting this evaluation, Jack notices Mac's hand, which has come up to grasp at his wrist. Jack disentangles Mac's fingers from his sleeve, holding his hand open in a loose grip, and studies the second of the only two injuries he's been able to find.

There's another scrape on his hand, and the ugly red abrasion is helping to form a picture in Jack's mind of what might've happened.

"What the hell..." he mutters under his breath, having identified with almost complete certainty the source of the admittedly extremely minor damage. He raises his voice and his eyes, looking at Mac and frowning. "Did you _trip_ , Mac?"

"It was dark." Mac's response is an odd mumble, distant like he's somewhere else. "Raining."

It was dark and raining and Mac, who Jack has seen scale the side of buildings fast enough that a thought about radioactive spiders has occurred to him more than once, had tripped. So he's off-balance, he's disoriented and unwell, and he's definitely got a fever. The conclusion Jack has reached is that this mission had sent Mac out in awful weather for an extended period of time, and at no point had he received adequate care or rest afterwards. They didn't have to fuss at him, look after him the way Jack knows he would've, but even _basic_ give-a-damn about your team's health and well-being results in better than this, and Jack is angry.

" _What_ ," he says again, voice fierce, "were they _thinking_?"

It's a directionless question expecting nothing in way of an answer, but Jack should've known better, because it receives one nonetheless.

"I'm sorry you had to drive all the way up here." Though the sentence is full and coherent, Mac's voice is hoarse and not entirely steady. "I don't… I'm not entirely sure what city this is, but they told me it was Northern California, and this was as far as I was going."

"First of all, 'city' is a bit generous." The joke falls flat. "Okay. Second, you don't apologize for that. You don't apologize for _anything_ , because you didn't do _anything_ wrong."

"You're mad." The observation is childish in its simplicity, and it serves to further reinforce for Jack the extent to which Mac is not firing on all cylinders.

"Yeah, I'm mad. I'm pissed as hell," Jack agrees, and continues immediately, seeing the way Mac ducks his head. "Ah, ah. Hang on. I didn't say I was mad at you, because I'm not. Mad, but not at you, got it? Now, do you need a hospital?"

It's a gamble, asking that question. Mac is better about answering it now than he used to be, better about being honest when the damage that's been done is severe enough that it's too dangerous not to see a doctor. Despite that, though, he's still cagey, especially when somehow convinced that what he's dealing with is his own fault, which is _often_.

Mac shakes his head and hums, indicating a negative. "I just want to go home." The confession is exhausted and pleading.

Jack nods, accepting the answer for now. It's as he's pulling the kid to his feet, wrapping his own jacket around him to hopefully combat the persistent shivering and beginning to escort him out to the car, that Jack comes to his final conclusion regarding the matter. If Mac gets any worse, any worse, if the head that's fallen down against his shoulder as they walk feels one degree hotter, if Mac shows signs of not recognizing him, if he _coughs_ in a way Jack decides as weird, they're going directly to an emergency room, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

The drive home is beautiful, just like the drive from Los Angeles to San Jose had been, but again much like that one, Jack doesn't pay attention to it. He focuses his attention on the road in front of him and his partner, sleeping at his side.

At first, Mac had been restless, shifting around and muttering. His eyes snapped open every so often, flickering around frantically until they land on Jack and he relaxes, a tiny sigh pushing his chest up and down. A couple of times he asked questions, asking Jack if it was over, if they were going home. It was after the most recent time that Jack had taken one hand from the steering wheel, throwing it over the back of the bench seats in the front of the truck. He'd been able to pull Mac over with hardly any pressure until the boy was slumped against him, head resting on his shoulder and his hair brushing the side of Jack's neck.

"Please don't make me do it again."

The words echo in Jack's ears. He'd had no idea who Mac thought he was talking to, be it Director Lange, or Kells and Thomas, hell maybe it had been directed at _Jack_ , but it had been more than he could take hearing without doing something, _anything_ to give Mac a sense of safety, of being watched over. Protected like he so obviously hadn't been the last two weeks.

The minutes they would have saved if he'd taken the main highway home are a trade Jack is willing to have made, for the lack of other people on their road right now. It's practically empty, and one-handed is far from the most hazardous circumstances under which he's driven a car - it's not the first time he's driven while holding Mac like this either, though he counts it among a short list of blessings that nobody is bleeding out this time. All in all, with circumstances being minimally distracting and considerably less catastrophic than previous experiences, Jack is left with a lot of time to think.

While concern about Mac's wellbeing and the question of what state he would be in had taken up the majority of his attention on the drive up, the tangible reassurance of the obvious-that Mac is not in the worst condition Jack has ever seen him in, and should be fine following a couple of days of taking it easy-leaves Jack completely free to consider at length the decisions, actions, and inactions on the parts of Patrick Lange, Serena Thomas, and Quentin Kells that have landed him in his current situation: in a car driving South down the coast of California with his young partner asleep next to him while suffering a high fever.

Shit happens.

Sometimes, on a mission, someone is compromised and the mission can't be thrown on hold. Jack doesn't like this reality, definitely doesn't like it when that 'someone' is Mac, but he understands it.

What he doesn't understand, what he absolutely cannot wrap his mind around, is how they'd _just left him there_. While on assignment with these people something had happened to Mac-and there was no way they hadn't noticed-and when it was over, they'd dumped him in a motel and taken off, and when time came to report, what did they do? Did they mention the kid seemed off, that he wasn't working up to standards? Did they recommend any kind of backup or support or _anything_? No. They called him _uncooperative_ and washed their hands of him without a second thought. Jack cannot for the life of him imagine doing that to anyone, much less Mac, someone he is responsible for. If he had only _been there_ , things would've gone much differently.

It was something Jack had taken for granted, up until now, the idea that he always _would_ be there. The time he's spent working alongside Mac-barely separating to complete different parts of the same mission, being his eyes in the sky when not physically present-it's somehow convinced Jack that this is how it would always be. It didn't make sense to think about what he'd do if he and Mac were split up, with different missions on different continents, working with different teams. Mac is his partner. It just wouldn't happen. And yet now it _has_ happened, and there's nothing to say Lange won't send Mac out like this again, loan him with an eye towards racking up IOUs from those most capable of serving Lange's bigger picture.

That is not a thought Jack likes very much. He and Mac, they work well together, and they're a team for a reason. They've worked with other agents before, sure, but always together, and always with the kind of people with at least a basic regard for their teammates' welfare. That had been far from the case this time. What kind of a Director would send an agent out alone with the sort of people who could treat a member of their team, loaner or not, with such willful disregard is the most worrisome part of the whole mess.

Equally troubling is the question that comes to mind as Jack pulls into the parking lot of his building. Could he keep _working_ with a Director who would do something like that?

It's a question he'll have to table for the moment, though, in favor of turning the car off and dealing with the more immediate of his concerns.

"Hey," Jack murmurs, jostling Mac a little to wake him up.

The ibuprofen he'd gotten Mac to take at the appropriate intervals along the drive has done its job to the extent it can. When Mac sits up, Jack's hand guiding him at the back of his neck, it feels like his fever's gone down a bit, though he's still not to a place where Jack would be comfortable leaving him alone. Hence why he'd brought Mac here, to his own apartment.

That memo seems to be one that's been lost on Mac himself, though, given his response is to dig the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing at them roughly, and say, "Thanks for giving me a ride, I'll be fi…" When he pulls his hands away and looks around, the words trail off into bewildered quiet. "We're not at my house."

"No, we're not," Jack says, torn between laughing and sighing deep enough to express how much his heart hurts for this kid sometimes. It comes out of nowhere. They'll be having a normal conversation and Mac will make some offhand comment that feels like a knife in Jack's ribs, taking his breath away. His hand slides to Mac's shoulder and squeezes, then pulls away so he can exit the car.

There's a room in Jack's apartment that used to be an office he never went in. Now, it's a spare bedroom that had been converted into such when Jack realized that sometimes they were gonna have to hide Mac somewhere until he could get away with not telling Bozer how he got hurt so badly working for a think tank. That's the room he settles Mac into now, shuffling him in despite protests from Mac himself that he'd just spent the entire drive home to Los Angeles sleeping.

Swallowing down the instinct to point out that the sleep Mac had gotten in the car may have technically been sleep, but had been restless and interrupted by illness and anxiety and thus absolutely didn't count, Jack just shook his head and dismissed the protest. Which had clearly been a good decision, if the result is any indication. It takes about fifteen minutes to get him to settle, fifteen minutes of, much like the beginning of the car ride, eyes flying periodically open and a one-word question coming immediately to his lips.

"Jack?"

After the third-or-so time this happens, Jack makes an executive decision and sits down, settling a hand over Mac's blanket-covered chest. Mac looks up at him oddly, for whatever counts as oddly when he's this out of it to begin with, and Jack to his credit isn't fazed at all.

"Get some rest, son," Jack says quietly, hoping that very specific term of endearment will do more good than it has the potential to do harm. "I'll be right here."

After a few moments, Mac's eyes drift shut again, this time with some measure of peace. Before long, the breathing under Jack's palm evens and slows, and Mac is out cold. The room is silent save the distant traffic outside, dark except for the yellowed light of a street lamp filtering in through cracks in the closed blinds. Everything feels calm and still, the way the ocean evens out after a storm passes through. Internally, Jack doesn't feel quite so tranquil. There are things he knows he needs to do, a phone call he has to make, a line to be drawn in the sand with Patrick Lange.

Mac shifts. It's a thoughtless, tiny movement Jack only notices because of his hand, resting over Mac's sternum. He's still asleep, features twisted slightly in discomfort brought by his persistent fever, and Jack makes an indistinct, wordless humming sound in the back of his throat. His hand moves slightly, a small, reassuring pat aimed to calm his partner's disturbed sleep. Mac doesn't stir again, and Jack doesn't move, doesn't get up or leave, doesn't so much as lift his hand. The things he has to do, they can wait. It can all wait.

The exhaustion of the hours and hours of driving Jack had just done begins to catch up with him, tiredness creeping in like a fog at the edges of his awareness until he finds his head snapping up, bouncing lightly off the headboard. He hadn't even realized he'd been dozing. For a moment, Jack entertains the idea of getting up and going to his own room, collapsing into bed and passing out for the next forty-eight hours at minimum.

As tempting as that thought is, though, it would mean getting up and leaving Mac here alone. And though there's hardly a safer place for him to be than Jack's spare room, the idea of being even a room away is not an appealing one at the moment. So, having slept in far more uncomfortable places and positions than sitting upright on a bed while Mac lays passed out next to him, Jack settles there for the night.

The fact that Mac, ever an early riser for as long as Jack has known him, is still out cold when he wakes a handful of hours later, is a testament to both how little rest he must've gotten on that mission. It speaks as well to how much the fever, still burning hot against Jack's evaluating palm, must have taken out of him. Heaving a quiet sigh and pulling his hand away, Jack stands slowly. His spine aches from having slept sitting up, and he winces. Looking back down at the bed, he studies Mac's sleeping face, looking for signs that in standing he's interrupted the kid's rest.

Mac is frowning in his sleep, curled now on his side, facing where Jack had been sitting moments before. He's kicked the blanket off at some point in the night, presumably due to his fever fluctuating his internal temperature regulation. It's gone back the other way now, if the way Mac is shivering is any indication, and Jack reaches over to pull the blanket back over him. With any luck, he'll burn through the fever quickly, before it turns into something more lingering or, god forbid, life-threatening.

That thought is one that makes Jack angry all over again, and reminds him that he does indeed have a direction to point that anger in, a direction with a dialable number programmed into his cell-phone under 'Director Lange'.

It's probably a good thing that Jack gets no answer, and is instead instructed by a mechanical voice to leave a voicemail at the tone.

"Lange, it's Jack Dalton," he says into the receiver as if the Director of DXS doesn't have caller ID. "MacGyver and I are home. He's not in good shape. Don't expect us in the rest of this week. Don't expect us in ever again if this shit has even a chance of repeating itself. I respect the chain of command. You know I do. But if, after this, you even entertain the idea of sending my partner off alone like that with people who are going to work him sick and then leave him in a motel, then I will walk, and you know he'll follow me. So, just…" Unable to think of anything else to say that won't definitely get him fired, Jack decides to conclude the message there. "Think on that."

Either that will be the end of it or it won't. Whichever way it goes, there's nothing Jack can do about it now, and he can't bring himself to regret it. There's no way he's going to let this happen again. He'd sooner quit, start a PI firm with Mac, and spend the rest of his life wearing tacky Hawaiian print and finding lost dogs than risk a repeat of the last two weeks.

That isn't what happens.

Word of Director Lange's resignation doesn't take long to reach Jack. He's not entirely sure it's even true until he makes his return to work and is ushered, along with Mac, into a closed-door meeting with Lange's successor. The woman is tall and dark-haired, with a calculating look on her face. Her arms are folded and she's standing perfectly still, almost eerily so.

"This," says the assistant who'd ushered Jack in, with an extremely solemn, slightly awed expression, "is the new Director, Patricia Thornton."

Bypassing completely that they're going from a 'Patrick' to a 'Patricia', Jack's focus catches on her last name instead. Thornton. The name sounds extremely familiar and it takes Jack a moment to place it, remember the man who that name belonged to. He'd be getting on in years now, yes, this woman is about the right age to be his daughter. Coincidence, Jack has learned, is a word not applicable to their line of work. She has to be.

"Please," the new Director says with a smile that reaches her eyes in a way Lange's rare ones, barely this side of grimaces really, never had, "it's Patti. Nobody ever calls me Patricia."

"Patti," Jack repeats, shaking her outstretched hand. _Oh yeah_ , he thinks. _This is gonna work out just fine._


End file.
